A throwback genius will never spin again

Stuart MacGill, for a decade the best bowling understudy in world cricket, has announced a sudden but not unsurprising retirement from the game. MacGill, like Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar, was cursed by having been born at the wrong time. Just as Goel and Shivalkar found their path to test cricket blocked by the immortal Bishan Singh Bedi, MacGill could usually only get a game when Shane Warne, the greatest spinner in the history of the game, was injured or banned. Thus he played just 44 Tests, but took over 200 wickets; one of the best strike rates for any spinner in the modern era. When he played together with Warne, it was usually at his home stadium, the Sydney Cricket Ground, where he invariably was the better performer. It was fitting that his initials were SCG.

As a cricketer MacGill was a throwback to a better past. He was every inch a test cricketer- he only played three one-dayers, and although he bowled well in those, he was an entirely one-dimensional cricketer in a team characterized by multiple skills. He was a true no. 11- a worse bat even than McGrath and an unathletic, erratic fielder. But he could bowl, and how- combining a legbreak and loop every bit Warne's equal with a wonderfully disguised, biting googly reminiscent of Qadir and Mushtaq Ahmed. He did bowl a four-ball every over or so, but in that sense he was a classic legspinner, unlike Warne, who possesed an eerily masterful control. Even as a person, MacGill was something of an oddball in the Australian team; famously, he once read 26 books during a tour to Zimbabwe.

After waiting nine years for Warne to retire, form and fitness cruelly deserted him just as the master had finally departed. Unlike Warne, Stuart MacGill will get a tame ending, bowing out at a two-thirds empty Sir Vivian Richards Oval rather than at a packed SCG, which on 6 January last year celebrated not only Warne and McGrath but also the first Ashes whitewash since 1921. Speaking of the Ashes, if Australia had only played MacGill over Gillespie or Kasprowicz in the Ashes tests of 2005, England would never have won the series.

Modern cricket has few good leg-spinners, and fewer old-fashioned "specialists". The cricketing artist is an even rarer breed. Stuart MacGill was all three. In an era where sixty-yard boundaries prevail, where six-hitting and yorkers are the only skills that are prized, cricketers who provide the fan with aesthetic pleasure are almost impossible to find. Stuart MacGill is retiring with many regrets, and the game is immeasurably poorer for his departure.